The proportion of the global population occupied by those over the age of 65 continues to increase, with many age-related disorders often requiring those suffering such conditions to seek assisted living, continuous care or to become hospitalised more frequently. Age-related frailty not only leads to an increase in fall risk, but also to a reduced rate of healing. As such, it is imperative to seek measures to reduce the risk of such injurious events in the ageing population.
Many such events occur while individuals are within an assisted living, care home or hospital setting, and can often be linked to the quality of furniture the individuals interact with on a daily basis.
We have identified that a common cause of falls in the elderly is the instability of furniture such as chairs and tables during, for example, mealtimes.
Current tables do not provide the necessary sturdiness or stability required to hold the weight of an individual who has become unbalanced during, for instance, standing from a seated position, or leaning forward in a seated position during mealtimes. In such cases, the fall risk is very high.
Tables and serving apparatuses according to current designs also often present a physical obstacle to frail individuals due to the overuse of floor space. Foldable tables can reduce the use of floor space when folded, but due to their folding mechanisms often collapse suddenly and abruptly under minimal pressure increasing risk of injury and falls. The foldable design, in such tables, is not optimised to suit the purpose of providing stability to an individual who has become unbalanced.
The positioning of currently available tables and serving apparatuses in their operative mode is also suboptimal and often necessitates that an individual deviate excessively from a comfortable posture or position, to one where said individual is likely to be in some discomfort or sustain an injury. In cases where furniture possesses beneficial orthopaedic properties, these properties are often nullified by such poor design of tables and serving apparatuses, since the individual must leave the optimum posture or position in order to operate or eat from said tables or serving apparatuses.
Currently available table and serving apparatus designs do not provide the combined properties of being stable and secure under multidirectional forces, while having minimal impact on floor space and being suitable for several types of furniture, and wherein risk of sudden collapse causing injury is mitigated.
It is therefore desirable to provide a serving apparatus solving the problems presented by current available tables and serving apparatuses, at least providing improved stability and reduced accident and fall risk in the elderly.